This is a much longer blog than my normal marketing rants. But I feel the need to pipe in and comment! I hear this all the time from my clients, “No one is commenting”, or “How come my fans are not participating”, or “How come none of my fans can see my posts”…

Ok so I totally stole that line from “The Social Network”. In the film, Mark Zuckerberg’s girlfriend is yelling at him for calling him a B**** on in his blog, she screams “The Internet is not written in Pencil, Mark, it’s written in ink!” That line has always stuck with me! I find it a little worrisome that many people do not understand that the internet is public. Once you put it out there, you can never get it back.

Many marketers today think of banner ads as the advertising tool of yesterday. When the Internet first took off, banner advertising was popular and in demand. As people started to develop "banner blindness" and started ignoring ads, the popularity of banner advertising has declined.

There are few platforms on the Internet with demographic data as accurate as Facebook. Unlike data from other sites, like Google or Advertising.com, Facebook users actually provide all their demographic information because it is a social media platform. As a marketer and a small business owner, that's a goldmine. A lot of advertising dollars spent on branding is wasted because people who aren’t in your target market see the ads. How many times have you seen a commercial on TV for a product you didn't care about? Facebook is different, again because it is a social media platform and the users provide the information. Facebook allows you to focus your branding in to only your target market. Your brand will be constantly exposed to the right people -while they are being social-, without you having to spend advertising dollars on the wrong people.

Building a business is a fantastic and challenging experience. You can wake up exhilarated to begin your day and go to bed feeling overwhelmed and frustrated. The key to success is to maintain a powerful positive; yes you can do it, mindset.Easier said than done, right? Here are some tips to help you create and sustain a powerful positive mindset so you attain the success you desire.

Blogs are an effective way to create an online presence for small businesses. It's a great way to increase your search engine optimization because having a blog on your business website increases traffic and awareness of your brand. A blog can be easily implemented in your website by using a content management system like Wordpress or Joomla, this implementation will keep your target audience coming back for more great content. Here are ten ideas to bring in the traffic your blog needs to survive the search engines and your target audience.

Online, one of the most significant keys to success is getting website traffic. The more visitors your target audience sees you, the better your sales and profits. Presumably you have a well-defined brand and you know what keywords your customers are searching for. You also regularly conduct keyword research to stay on top of what is popular specific to your target market. Based on those assumptions here are five quick and easy tips to get website traffic fast! If you don't have those things don't worry, Marketplace Maven can help, focus on one thing at a time and keep reading.

With some strategy, Twitter can boost your connections and website traffic. Social Networking can be thought of as a live networking event where you can jump into a conversation at any time. It's not only a great tool for communicating information to followers but it is also for engaging with them. Twitter is no different from a live networking event. Most people, even those who are on Twitter frequently, use it only for posting content, not for starting a two-way conversation. This is equal to walking into an event and talking at people and not listening to their responses. It just doesn't work. Since we have been using Twitter, we have honed in on a few features that help small businesses make better connections and build brand exposure. Here are a few things we have learned about Twitter that could help improve your small business marketing strategy:

Online content marketing and social media is not just about uploading your digital content and forgetting about it, hoping someone will read it. Sharing branded content, and social interaction are critical components to your company's social media and your content marketing strategy.

What on earth is a Blue Ocean?

When I refer to “making blue oceans”, I am referring to strategy laid out in a book written by Harvard Professors, W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, called Blue Ocean Strategy (go buy it from Amazon here).

Does Piracy Hinder Innovation?

Many opponents to piracy believe that piracy hinders innovation. The thought is that if “ﬁrms know that their products will be pirated, they have no incentive to innovate. For ﬁrms piracy means indeed that they won’t get any “reward” for their innovation, and that as they are experiencing a smaller amount of sales, their revenues won’t cover the R&D expenses.” (Rayna, 2004) There is no doubt that piracy, in all forms, “has increased over the past years, [yet] the ﬁrms producing digital goods remain highly innovative. What’s more [these] types of ﬁrms certainly stand among the most innovative ﬁrms. For example, Microsoft, despite piracy, keeps releasing new software.” (Rayna, 2004)

So what is Piracy Anyway?

Nobody likes having something stolen from them, and essentially that is exactly what piracy is – theft. Merriam Webster (2012) defines piracy as “the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright ”. The two largest supporters of SOPA and opponents of piracy are the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Both of these organizations argue that “online piracy hold that it poses a serious threat to artistic and creative development in the world. They hold that piracy cuts into profits, reducing the amount of money an artist or programmer can expect to make, and therefore reducing the incentive for them to create new work.” (Wisegeek; 2012) The RIAA (2012) states;

What is SOPA?

There has been a lot of internet chatter recently about two proposed bills; the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate. (Gardner, 2012) According to supporters of the proposed legislation “the purpose of the bill is to give more power to U.S. law enforcement to fight the online selling of copyrighted materials (movies, music) and counterfeit goods (high end purses and drugs).” (Crabtree, 2011)